John Mayer and longtime manager Michael McDonald of Mick Management have parted ways, according to two knowledgeable executives.
The split was finalized in the midst of the second leg of the John Mayer Live In Concert tour Tuesday night (Dec. 3), at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio. Mayer has already been removed from Mick’s artist roster on the company’s website, which currently showcases other acts like Passion Pit, St. Lucia, Sharon Van Etten, Ray LaMontagne and the Walkmen (who last week announced an indefinite hiatus).
“After 13 years, John and I are parting ways,” McDonald said in a statment. “It’s been a magnificent journey, which began before his debut album, and along the way has included seven Grammy awards, years of massively successful tours around the world, and over 20 million albums sold. I hold John’s talent in the highest regard and wish him nothing but the best.”
A rep for Mayer declined comment.
McDonald formed Mick Management in 2001 with Mayer as a founding client. That was shortly after the launch of ATO Records, co-founded in 2000 by McDonald, Dave Matthews, Coran Capshaw and Chris Tetzeli. Most recently, he helped shepherd Mayer’s return to touring after a forced hiatus sidelined him with surgery on his vocal cords from a severe tissue inflammation, also known as granuloma. John Mayer Live In Concert is his first tour in three years and supports “Paradise Valley,” which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in August. “Born And Raised,” Mayer’s album issued in the midst of his vocal hiatus, became his third Billboard 200 chart-topper in May 2012.
The tour is currently wrapping up its second U.S. leg, which concludes Dec. 17 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. That performance will mark the culmination of an Instagram contest sponsored by Citi (and hosted by Billboard – billboard.com/bklovesmayer). Mayer also recently participated in a Tumblr Q&A, dubbed “Dashboard Confessions,” to promote the tour on Nov. 22 via his Tumblr Page.
Aside from the Instagram and Tumblr promotions, Mayer himself has been absent from social media following a self-imposed exile from Twitter, having developed a reputation for off-color remarks in interviews with magazines like Playboy and Rolling Stone that began to detract from his music career.
“People misjudged the moment that I turned the corner on the person I was, and the music I wanted to make,” Mayer told Billboard in a March cover story about the decision to not actively participate in his social media (the promotional @johnmayer Twitter account currently has 287,000 followers.)
He gets slightly more personal on his Instagram account, however (@johnmayer, 284,000 followers), and recently debuted footage from the cover shoot for his single “Who You Love,” a duet with girlfriend Katy Perry.
Up next for Mayer? A 2014 tour that starts in Australia and a proper radio push for “Who You Love,” which stands a good chance of becoming Mayer’s biggest single in years, having candidly referred to “Born And Raised” recently as a “no-hit record.”
In a Billboard interview this August at Sony’s New York headquarters, Mayer said of the duet: “When you first read the reports about [the duet], you’ll think that it’s a gimmick … I love a good challenge and that’s certainly one. But the hope is you hear it once because of the curiosity and then you go, ‘Wow, I really like that. I could find a place for hearing that a lot more.’”
